Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch review – Glanert's spectacular, scurrilous chronicle of sin
Summary
Between 2011 and 2017, the German opera composer Detlev Glanert was in residence with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. The British premiere of Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch, with Semyon Bychkov conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its chorus, was the spectacular climax of a Total Immersion day devoted to Glanert’s music. Much of the choral writing is suitably apocalyptic, the orchestration massively detailed and the depiction of the sins mostly left to the soloists, while a chamber choir at the back of the hall supply most of the reflective moments. And though solo instruments emerge occasionally from the roiling textures – a comforting cor anglais, a menacing tuba – there are not enough of such moments to dispel a sense of unvaried density through long passages. Aga Mikolaj, Christa Mayer, Norbert Ernst and Albert Albert Pesendorfer were the four soloists, and David Wilson-Johnson the stentorian speaker, summoning Bosch to account for himself from the back of the hall, while the BBC Singers (who prefaced the requiem with a beautifully delivered group of sacred and profane Flemish settings from Bosch’s time) provided the chamber choir.